Modern health care environments place heavy burdens on medical personnel responsible for a continuously growing number of patients. Nursing shortages and heavy workloads continue to be the norm in most modern hospitals. Nursing and other front line medical caregivers are typically responsible for monitoring and reporting patient conditions. A patient's post-operative recovery, for example, often requires monitoring and restricting patient movement. This task is frequently complicated when dealing with patients who are confused or unable to understand the caregiver's instructions and are at risk of injury due to their propensity for excessive movement.
Patient movement and bed position detection systems provide monitoring and alerting capabilities by conveying to care giving personnel a patient's movement and/or position on the bed. These systems provide for remote monitoring and alerting by employing sensors incorporated into hospital beds or other patient supporting equipment that interface with a nurse call system to relay the sensor data to a nursing station or a telemetry unit. When the system detects that a patient has left the bed, changed positions and/or moved the bed controls in a way that does not comply with an allowed range of motion, nursing personnel are alerted to take appropriate action. Typically, patient movement and position sensors mounted in the bed interface with a control unit located on the bed. The control unit transmits the patient data to the nursing station via a cable that connects the control unit and a nurse call system interface located in the patient's room.
Patient beds and other patient equipment are often moved about a hospital. Upon moving the bed to another location, the cable connecting the bed to the nurse call system is disconnected for transport of the bed and then reconnected when the bed is prepared at its new location. Because the cable is a physical tether, it is easy for hospital personnel to forget to disconnect the cable before moving the bed or any other equipment cabled to the wall, causing damage to the cables and to the connectors on the bed and the wall Additionally, when the bed is being prepared at a new location, hospital personnel do not have the physical reminder to connect the cable.